


Muse

by snowycricket



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M, Strangers to Lovers, vague description of sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:22:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26191873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowycricket/pseuds/snowycricket
Summary: “The sun and this stranger can conspire against me as much as they wish.” He hummed, lifting his stray teacup higher to reach his mouth. Tea in the morning while facing your own strange portraits of a man that does not exist while the sun laughs in the back sounded perfect to Doyoung.
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38
Collections: jaedo digest: vol. 2





	Muse

**Author's Note:**

> This is practically plotless, and was the bane of my existence for a while. I don't know if I did this prompt justice, but I'm thankful nonetheless! Thank you to jaedo press for everything <3
> 
> Prompt #114

Doyoung’s hands possessed a quality of life the rest of him failed to catch up to -- an energy and an enthusiasm for his work that his mind would not dare fathom on most days. His hands itched with the desire to hold his paint brushes, harmonising together in the slick sound of his oil paints.

Sometimes, he considers the rest of him far plainer than his hands and their work; dark hair with the darkest fringe trimmed just enough to let his brown eyes peer at the work he believed he had no control over. The most remarkable part of him was his stained hands, which almost permanently stayed the colour red and brown, contrasting with the light blouses and trousers he donned. The one thing Doyoung was sure of was that his hands definitely stood out.

If Doyoung had the company he once had, they would tell him he looked possessed, a madman on the run to reach his canvas, whenever the inspiration struck. They once told him to be more self-aware of his own artistry, so it does not make any visitors uncomfortable with his eccentricities. However, there was no one here to chide him anymore. Thus, Doyoung gave himself up to his own hands; the same hands that took him to the canvases at the break of dawn every day, to watch the sunrise creep in and colour in the only world Doyoung knows.

The balcony doors creaked with effort as Doyoung swung them open -- he needed more light today, as much as the sun would grant and shower him with. Sunlight, however, is cruel with where it shines. Turning back to survey the room, Doyoung noticed the same face peering back at him from various angles, smiling ruefully at Doyoung’s blank expression.

“The sun and this stranger can conspire against me as much as they wish.” He hummed, lifting his stray teacup higher to reach his mouth. Tea in the morning while facing your own strange portraits of a man that does not exist while the sun laughs in the back sounded perfect to Doyoung.

Doyoung supposes he is possessed; how else could he explain the fact that the only thing he’d been drawing for the past month had been a man with countless freckles, knotted locks of the deepest brown Doyoung’s ever found in oil paints, and unnerving aquamarine eyes? A man he did not know and had never met, furthermore.

The man is always in the back of Doyoung’s head, in different angles and positions -- sometimes, even smothered in countless flowers: daisies, lilies, peonies, carnations and even the occasional rose. It was almost as if this stranger was imprisoned in Doyoung’s mind and his only reprieve was being immortalized on Doyoung’s canvases, with Doyoung’s paints, using Doyoung’s hands. Doyoung definitely considered himself possessed.

The blank canvas in the middle of the room was the biggest Doyoung had dedicated to the stranger yet, and he already knew what it was going to look like when he was done with it: the same man with his sparkled closed eyes, resting on a bed of flowers — coincidentally the same flowers growing in abandon in the gardens, taking over the cobblestone paths Doyoung once trawled as a teenager and a child. He had the habit of pressing the flowers between yellowing pages, watching their small petals curl in age, and the memory must’ve stuck.

As he started this next canvas, the one plaguing thought not dissipating from his otherwise blissfully empty mind was that this oil painting felt different to the rest littering the studio.

Doyoung’s studio was a safe haven; it was the place where he would lose himself in yet come out completely reanimated. His bedroom was a close second, because the walls never talked and his hands didn’t itch. The stranger’s existence bedeviling the studio never did carry to the four walls of Doyoung’s bedroom, leaving his mind blissfully empty and ready for dreamless sleep.

The four posters circling the large bed seemed so beckoning as Doyoung dragged himself into the room, with his wrists scrubbed raw and pink from the paints. He slipped under thick covers unceremoniously. The monotony of his days never slipped past him, leaving him hyper aware and fixated on the loneliness chewing through his chest like a parasite. The nights before he succumbed to sleep, he imagined something different. Doyoung was no noctambulist, nor was he nocturnal, but sometimes he wished for the excitement and unpredictability of these qualities -- preferring to feel haunted and unsettled, rather than so soundly tucked in his countrified solitude of artistry day in, day out.

Who was Doyoung kidding? He just wanted to have someone by his side, rather than anything wild, unprecedented or routine-less -- it was only that Doyoung preferred not to confront this desire taking root in his dully beating heart.

“You are not what I imagined.” Doyoung whispered to himself, eyes shifting from the large window signalling daybreak back down to the body tucked into his side. The man was the same, down to the strands of hair framing his face, yet he was not the same as the stranger living on Doyoung’s canvases, this stranger was alive. That difference was enough to set a chill deep in Doyoung’s bones, accompanied by the panic coursing through his veins, hiding any deep anticipation he felt at the sight of the creation that tormented him for over a month.

Sliding his body out from under the covers, Doyoung forwent his shoes, leaving bare feet to slide against the rigid tiles, still chilled by the presence of night, to reach his studio. The prickling sensation of tears felt unfamiliar as he paused to watch the wooden studio door hang ajar, unlike how it was the night before. The stranger must be true, rather than a fragment of Doyoung’s imagination coming out to taunt him.

Hesitant steps lead Doyoung into the room, only to be greeted with the sight of his previously lovely and complete large canvas smothered only in flowers, forgoing the beautiful boy Doyoung had painstakingly etched onto the canvas only yesterday and again in his mind.

“Are you going to watch that painting all day?” A voice, deeper than Doyoung’s own, called quietly behind him, as if wary to disturb Doyoung and his impending breakdown at the sight of his own art. In some ways, the canvas was defaced, by the disappearance of its main attraction and point -- it made Doyoung’s blood boil unreasonably.

“Perhaps; until you return to it.” Doyoung heard his own reply somewhat distantly, mind still preoccupied with the painting and the freckled man standing behind him, who just yesterday was nothing more than oil and hemp. He heard the man shuffle forward, sound gurgling as if underwater, because Doyoung feels drenched in a sea of an alternative reality, and the world feels so undiscovered and new suddenly that Doyoung wants to throw open the balcony doors and walk straight into the thorned rose bush sitting prettily on the side, waiting for a moment like this with bated breath.

“It’s unfair,” Doyoung gasped out next, completely to the confusion of both himself and the stranger, “You’re so exact to all of my paintings and images, yet the freckles are slightly more dotted, your hair looks far more brittle and I had no idea your eyes are actually brown.” Doyoung knew he sounded defeated as he spins to stare at the stranger -- the stranger with wide eyes, acting like a deer caught in headlights, and straight shoulders, looking unlike anything Doyoung could imagine, despite being the creator of him.

“It’s like you have a life of your own,” Doyoung stated, defeat still shading his tone and eyes, “You look like this, don’t you?” He picked up one of his smaller canvases and thrusted it into the stranger’s face.

He watched with rapt attention as realisation washed over the man, and briefly Doyoung considers inviting him to join his thorny suicide following this confrontation -- it only feels right, now that the stranger is also in the same sea, drowning in fallacy.

“That is me…” The man traced his own features on the stretched cloth, mouth opening slightly in shock. Doyoung noticed his lips are pinker than imagined, yet chapped -- the differences popping up in Doyoung’s mind are countless. He spent a month getting acquainted with his version of this stranger’s face, and the man’s appearance feels like a punishment, a correction, an amelioration of what Doyoung thought was a final product of a creation but is in reality a lesser draft that cannot compare. Doyoung’s head spun and continues to spin.

The man looked up suddenly, pulling Doyoung out of another reverie,  
“I have existed before this, and I will exist after this -- I am not yours.” His determination felt stifling to Doyoung.

“Then whose are you if not mine?” Doyoung snorted. The man’s ears reddened at the statement.

“Do you even know my name to act so shamelessly?” The embarrassment reached the man’s cheekbones, freckles blending in with the peach tone.

“No, tell me. I’m your painter, Doyoung.” Doyoung knew the stranger’s question sounded demanding, but he let it slip. Curiosity has taken over Doyoung and nothing can prevent him from distinguishing this actual being from the 2D image that retreated to sit on a shelf in his mind.

“I am Jung Jaehyun,” the man, Jaehyun, said somewhat proudly, “I do have an identity, it seems that you were not privy to. A shame.”

Doyoung agreed.

It is unsettling to be surrounded by a foreign presence after years of being alone -- it is like the social version of learning to walk again after a gnarly accident. Doyoung imagined the next person he would see would be the messenger boy bringing him a sizeable basket of food that Doyoung would then unintentionally ration over a month because he had no self control to remind him to keep himself happy. Sometimes, Doyoung entertained the thought that the next person that would see him would be the coroner; a morbid but comforting thought.

Doyoung’s mother certainly hoped he’d drop dead soon enough anyway -- she was sick of his preoccupation, to the point that she left this estate. She punished him by turning his home into the corner of the world he’s perpetually forced to stay in; a lawless child. The rest of his family dispersed too: siblings, cousins, uncles, aunts, even his father. Doyoung presumes most of them are dead and have not had a single thought of Doyoung since their escape from the manor, except for when they pass what they consider “crazy” people on the sides of the cobblestone roads of the city -- they think “Ah, they are only poor versions of Doyoung, all one and the same at the end of the day”. Doyoung always thought it was funny that a rich family, composed almost fully of philanthropists, would shame and look down upon those even slightly different to them. He didn’t find it surprising, because they’d already left him.

Staring at Jaehyun marveling at his paintings of the man himself, Doyoung thinks that he’s underestimated the power of human company. The robins only started their dawn chorus at the sight of Jaehyun, instead of cawing indignantly once or twice at the estate as normal before speeding off to an actual place appreciative of their music. Doyoung hangs his head; of course even nature would adore Jaehyun -- he’s objectively beautiful.

“Wait, this one,” Jaehyun pointed at one of the smallest paintings Doyoung had done of him, and coincidentally one of the first, “I remember this day. I was at an equestrian show, god knows what about, I certainly didn’t care. The outfit here is the one I wore that day.”

Doyoung gazed at the royal blue blouse he’d painstakingly mixed so much paint for, because the blue was never blue enough,  
“That’s interesting. These portraits are all from my head, you can’t accuse me of being a stalker or anything of the sort.” Doyoung’s imaginary shackles raised.

“I never thought of that,” Jaehyun laughed, a low throaty sound -- at the moment, Doyoung wished sounds like that could equally be immortalised in paint.  
“I just simply felt happy a cute artist thought of me enough to draw a whole room-full of me.”

“Paint. You mean paint not draw, I don’t often outline.” Doyoung muttered, head hanging even lower.

“Ah yes, forgive me.” Jaehyun smiled and,

“Oh, the dimples go very deep.” Doyoung couldn’t help but interject. 

Doyoung’s mouthiness and act of speaking before thinking used to get him wrist lashes; one for every inappropriate or wrongly-timed interjection. Doyoung’s wrist throbs in memory, and he wants to cry a little because Jaehyun is reminding him of so many memories -- good and bad -- and Doyoung is confused why his voice isn’t scratchy from lack of use, and it’s all a little too good to be true right now because Doyoung does know what he subconsciously wished for last night; it’s overwhelming. The companionship wish granted by the heavens, easily taken away by them too, makes Doyoung feel guilty that he’s dragged Jaehyun out of some alternate universe, or simply from another location of the world, but the painted man is here now, leaving Doyoung’s heart already broken because he’s going to leave and no one, even the stupid robins leering in from the garden’s tree branches, don’t want that.

Doyoung thinks automatic attachment spells out how lonely he is. It’s laughable.  
“Are you hungry?” Doyoung manages to stutter out, after a few awkward beats.

Jaehyun blinked owlishly; he seemed almost glad for the steer into a different conversation. Doyoung filed another thought away in his head: maybe Jaehyun is as socially inept as he and this is a learning curve.

“I could always eat.” Jaehyun’s all smiles today.

“Well, I hope you enjoy fruits and vegetables -- I can’t cook.” Doyoung saunters out of his studio, only hearing Jaehyun follow by the measured but heavy footfalls behind him. They traipse through several cream coloured corridors, their wallpaper now peeling on the edges -- as if they’re giving up on Doyoung too. The kitchen is considerably far (one of the reasons why Doyoung hardly goes and instead stays hungry) and once they do reach it, Doyoung has to use a lot of effort to creak the heavy door open.

Other than the effort in reaching and opening up the kitchen, their meal goes well; the two collaborate in washing and dicing anything they want, before shuffling through to the dining room Doyoung hasn’t used since his family’s leave. It’s cobwebbed and slightly dusty, but the large french windows streaming in sunlight create an unshakeable warm feeling in their chests, and Doyoung realises how hungry he was, once they’ve climbed onto the large table -- seated like on a picnic. Jaehyun smiles fondly and starts mindlessly chattering.

Jaehyun was a simple aristocrat with far too much money to do anything with, and a far too little attention span to dedicate himself to something. Doyoung couldn’t help but joke,  
“You could be a Dorian Gray if you have nothing else to do, a pretty face for the admirations of painters.”

Jaehyun laughed a loud boisterous laugh, eyes wrinkling and dimples prominent like wells,  
“You already do that for me, why would I need someone else?”

Jaehyun admitted his life was not composed of much -- it was all about appearance and carrying oneself, that’s his family’s manifesto. It makes sense that Jaehyun did at least pick up some of those beliefs and habits, but Doyoung sensed his hesitancy when mentioning his own parents, and it was not hard to connect the dots: Jaehyun was like his family but not enough for their liking. It was horribly relatable to Doyoung.

“Doyoung, teach me how to paint.” Jaehyun’s arm curled around Doyoung’s shoulders as they walked back to the studio, leaving Doyoung to splutter. Doyoung wondered if his face was bathed in a deep shade of crimson.

“Painting isn’t an… activity that has instructions -- it just is.”

“Then, you just must be a bad teacher.” Jaehyun’s teasing smirk confirmed that he was joking around.

“A bad teacher only has bad students.” Doyoung raised his eyebrows, “And it’s not like you’ll be here long enough for me to teach you anything substantial.”

“How do you know that? What if I choose to hang around you forever and bother you every day?” Jaehyun’s fingers gripped Doyoung’s left shoulder securely. The artist never realised that, despite how they were both of similar heights, Jaehyun was just wider and filled rooms better, never seeming too small or mousy like Doyoung tended to be.

“Then, you can go into town and buy food, so the messenger boy can stop trekking up here every month.”

“You’re slightly avoiding the question, but do you never leave?” Jaehyun’s frown paired with kind eyes was a sight that Doyoung would never forget -- was it pity?

“I don’t think I have the ability to leave.” Doyoung is chained to this place, and he still might be possessed by god-knows-what to draw Jaehyun so he cannot leave.

Jaehyun didn’t say any more.

The decision to paint actual Jaehyun was spontaneous -- not the best of decisions, Doyoung might think a while from now. Yet, his hands, the same hands that live separately from Doyoung and make the rules, are itching and practically clawing to get the features that imaginary Jaehyun did not have onto canvas. His more numerous freckles, his brown eyes, his slightly more trimmed yet still unkempt-looking hair, and his far deeper dimples.

The stool Jaehyun perched on was comfortable enough to keep in place for the better part of an hour before he started getting agitated, clearly unused to sitting for a painting.

“Aren’t you an aristocrat? Why aren’t you used to posing for a long time?” Doyoung couldn’t help but ask.  
“Only once. My parents dislike me being in paintings as the youngest.” Jaehyun’s face drooped, dimples hidden. Doyoung decided he hated that wilting flower look of his. Casting a glance at the biggest canvas, now only adorned with flowers, Doyoung realised Jaehyun was a flower too, capable of being dried out, or of over watering, or of wilting.

Doyoung painted with a renewed vigour, ignoring Jaehyun’s fidgeting, just to show him what a beautiful flower he really is. Doyoung doesn’t know where this desire came from.

“I’m finished, come see.” Twilight had hit, skies a vibrant mixture of purple and orange. Doyoung’s hands ended their obsessed shake, satisfied with his work. Looking at the painting, Doyoung agreed silently.

Jaehyun perked up, spine straightening — a flower back to life. Coming to stand by Doyoung’s side, his eyes widened.

“You’re— this— thank you.” Jaehyun muttered, “I’m so thankful.”

Jaehyun’s head turned to look at Doyoung, who was already turned.

“You’re amazing.” Jaehyun’s eyes flirted across his face, absorbing all of the painter’s features. Belatedly, Doyoung realised this was a fragile moment. If Doyoung let it continue, it could change everything and he would not be able to go back to his lonely existence in these two rooms of the estate. Yet, Doyoung wasn’t strong enough to resist temptation.

As Jaehyun closed the distance, Doyoung leaned impossibly closer, hands flitting to his neck and shoulder.

Doyoung has kissed and been kissed; back when he had the freedom of movement, before he was dubbed the forgotten, bizarre member of the upper class. However, time makes experiences feel anew. Doyoung’s nerves set on fire and he could never go back from that.

Jaehyun’s hands cradled the painter’s face as he breathed him in. Doyoung felt as if they were besotted with eachother, the stranger and the painter with a hyperactive mind and even more hyper painted fingers.

The two stumbling through the darkening corridor to reach Doyoung’s mind-numbing bedroom is a fast ordeal — happens in a flurry of giggles and even more chaste kisses.

Doyoung will never forget the feeling of skin against his — Jaehyun felt the finest silk wrapped around him. Jaehyun is so malleable and even prettier against Doyoung’s sheets, with a faint smile never leaving face — an impression of dimples (that Doyoung compulsively kissed and traced) etched permanently. Doyoung’s own live painting.

“I think…” Jaehyun paused, hands wrapped around Doyoung’s waist to press him against his chest, “I think I’ll have to leave. But, I’ll be back.”

Doyoung can’t help the feeling of elation; the hope clouds his senses and his hands itch again to paint Jaehyun in this light; a hopeful light of Jaehyun being his saviour and someone who Doyoung might really quickly be falling in love with. Doyoung has no other comparison.

Doyoung shushes Jaehyun with another kiss.

This morning, the second Doyoung’s eyes snap open at the feeling of sunlight pressing down on his cheekbones, he rushes out of bed — lead by his hands.

He doesn’t look at the empty spot on the bed, a shy outline of a person left. His hands itch to draw the real Jaehyun, until he returns again, so that’s what Doyoung does. Today, tomorrow and until Jaehyun returns again for a day — company.


End file.
